Jackalope Theatre, a company founded and led by Columbia College Chicago Theatre alums and former students, presents its 16th annual Living Newspaper Festival, an evening of five one-act plays inspired by recent news headlines. The Living Newspaper Festival runs August 21 through 25 at Broadway Armory Park, located at 5917 N. Broadway in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. The Living Newspaper Festival is inspired by the 1930s Living Newspapers of the Federal Theatre Project. For tickets and more information, click here.

The festival is produced by Columbia College alum Kaiser Ahmed ’08, a graduate of the Theatre Program’s Theatre Directing Program. Ahmed, who cofounded Jackalope in 2008 and serves as the company’s artistic director, is also directing one of the short plays in the festival, Enemies of America, based on the case of a Columbia University student whose family was targeted by the Trump administration because of her activism.

The cast of the Living Newspaper Festival includes Columbia College alum Lindsey Gavel BFA ’09, a graduate of the Theatre Program’s Acting Program, and Jackalope co-founder Andrew Burden Swanson, a former student in the Columbia College Theatre Department’s Acting program.